Chapter 72 -
The whiskey bottle felt heavy in Nia’s hand as she stepped into the hallway, the glass cool against her palm. Behind her, she could hear Micheal’s muffled protests, something about bad ideas and worse timing, but his words were already fading into the background noise of her own racing thoughts.
Matteo straightened from where he had been leaning against the wall, his eyes widening when he saw her. “Miss Wallace, you should not—”
“I am fine, Matteo,” Nia said, her voice coming out steadier than she felt. The whiskey hummed warm in her veins, making everything feel both sharper and softer at the same time. "Just going for a walk.”
“At two in the morning?” Matteo’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “With a bottle of the boss’s whiskey?”
“The boss has plenty of whiskey,” Nia replied, already moving past him. “He will not miss this one.”
Matteo moved to follow her, but Nia spun around, holding up one hand. “Do not,” she said. “Please. I need to do this alone.”
Something in her expression must have convinced him, because Matteo stopped, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he did not want to say. Finally, he sighed, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest. “If the boss asks, I tried to stop you.”
“You did try,” Nia assured him, already turning away. “You tried very hard. It is not your fault I am stubborn.”
She did not wait for his response. Her feet carried her forward, down the hallway she had walked a hundred times before, but tonight it felt different. Longer. Every shadow seemed to reach for her, every creak of the old mansion’s bones made her jump. The chandelier overhead cast fractured light across the marble floor, making patterns that danced and shifted with each step she took.
“This is stupid,” Nia muttered to herself, her voice barely above a whisper. “This is so incredibly stupid.”
But she did not stop walking.
The mansion was different at this hour. During the day, it was alive with movement, with Rosa’s sharp commands to the kitchen staff, with Gabriel’s laughter echoing from wherever he had managed to sneak off to, with the low murmur of Christian and Lucia’s endless arguments. But now, in the small hours of the morning, the house felt like it was holding its breath. Waiting.
Nia passed the portrait gallery, those stern-faced men and women who had built the DeSanto legacy staring down at her with judgment in their painted eyes. She wondered what they would think of her. A kidnapped woman, half-drunk on stolen whiskey, walking through their hallowed halls to confront the family’s enforcer. Probably nothing good.
“They are dead,” she reminded herself, her footsteps echoing against the marble. “Dead people do not get opinions.”
The staircase that led to the upper floors loomed ahead of her, its carved banister gleaming in the dim light. Nia gripped the bottle tighter and started climbing, her free hand trailing along the smooth wood. One step. Two steps. Three. Each one felt like a small victory, like she was climbing toward something important even though she had no idea what she was going to say when she got there.
By the time she reached the second floor, her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. The hallway stretched out before her, longer than it had any right to be, lined with closed doors that hid their secrets well. Most of these rooms belonged to family members, to people who had claimed their space in this mansion through blood or marriage or sheer force of will.
Nia walked past Christian and Lucia’s suite, where even now she could hear the muffled sound of raised voices. They were fighting again. They were always fighting. She wondered if they ever got tired of it, or if the anger was what kept them together. A shared enemy was still a connection, after all.
Micheal’s room was dark and silent. He had probably passed out by now, sprawled across her bed still fully dressed. Nia felt a pang of guilt for leaving him like that, but it faded quickly. Micheal would understand. He was the one who made her drink.
“He will choose revenge every time,” Micheal had said, and maybe he was right. Maybe Leo would always pick the ghost of Andrea over anything real, anything living. But Nia had to know. She had to hear it from him.
The hallway narrowed as she approached the forbidden wing. That was what Rosa called it, though never when any of the DeSanto brothers could hear. The forbidden wing, where Leo kept himself locked away from the rest of the world. Where only Gabriel was allowed to enter freely, and even then, only sometimes.
Nia had never been here before. There had never been a reason, never been an invitation. But now, with liquid courage warming her blood and Micheal’s story burning in her mind, she could not stay away.
The floor changed under her feet. The marble gave way to rich, dark wood that absorbed sound instead of echoing it back. The walls were a deeper shade, almost charcoal in the dim light, and the artwork that hung here was different too. Older. More serious. Abstract shapes that looked like they might mean something if you stared at them long enough.
There was only one door at the end of this hallway. Tall, imposing, made from wood so dark it was almost black. No nameplate, no decoration, nothing to indicate who lived behind it. But Nia knew. Everyone knew. This was where Leonardo DeSanto hid himself away when the weight of being the Enforcer got too heavy.
She stopped in front of the door, the whiskey bottle dangling from her fingers. This close, she could smell tobacco and leather, that scent that always clung to Leo like a second skin. It seeped out from under the door, filling the hallway with something that was almost familiar now. Almost comforting, in a way that made her chest tight.
“This is stupid,” she said again, louder this time. Her voice sounded strange in the quiet hallway, too harsh, too real. “You are drunk and this is stupid and you should go back to your room.”
But her feet stayed planted where they were. Her hand, the one not holding the bottle, lifted slowly until it hovered just inches from the dark wood. All she had to do was knock. Just knock, and whatever happened next would happen. Simple.
Except nothing about this was simple.